NDP candidate jumps ship to Bloc Québécois in Brome-Missisquoi

The NDP’s candidate in the Quebec riding of Brome-Missisquoi has jumped ship and will run for the Bloc Québécois in the next federal election, iPolitics has learned.

Christelle Bogosta, who carried the New Democratic Party banner in 2008, informed NDP Leader Jack Layton she was quitting in a letter dated Wednesday.

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe is to announce what he is billing as “a surprise candidacy” Friday.

The announcement comes less than a month after Bogosta told a local media outlet she was set to run again and was counting on the same team who helped her during the last election.

The Bloc won the riding in 2008 in one of the tightest races in Quebec but with incumbent Bloc MP Christian Ouellet, 76, set to retire it needed a new candidate.

Ouellet narrowly beat out former Liberal cabinet minister Denis Paradis with 35 per cent of the vote to 33 per cent for Paradis. Conservative Mark Quinlan came third with 19 per cent of the vote and Bogosta garnered 9 per cent of the vote for the NDP.

While the majority of the voters in the picturesque Eastern Townships riding are federalist, splits in the federalist vote in the past couple of elections have contributed to the Bloc’s wins.

In her letter, Bogosta says she has worked hard for the NDP but her small team has run out of steam, hasn’t adequately organized the riding, or collected enough money to run a campaign at the level of its support.

Bogosta also cited a recent comment by NDP MP Thomas Mulcair, the party’s lead organizer in Quebec, suggesting the Canadian Constitution be reopened to include Quebec. Bogosta said that appears to her to contradict the position the NDP took in its Sherbrooke Declaration, ratified by the party in 2006.

“I am no longer at ease being involved in an organization which doesn’t hold to its adopted principles, especially with regard to the one which was determinant in my rallying to the party at the start,” she wrote.

“For all these reasons I decided to respond favorably to the offer Gilles Duceppe made me to run as a candidate for the Bloc Québécois in Brome-Missisquoi.”

Bogosta is the second former NDP candidate to jump to the Bloc in recent months. Jean-Claude Rocheleau is seeking the Bloc nomination in the east end Montreal riding of Pointe-de-l’Île where incumbent Bloc MP Francine Lalonde, who has had a battle on and off with cancer, has decided not to run again.

Reached by iPolitics, Mulcair described Bogosta’s move as “flagrant opportunism.”

“The fact that the Bloc spends so much time obsessing about NDP candidates is a sign that we have become very important players in Quebec and they are very concerned about us.”